BACK TO OUR ROUTES READING BETWEEN THE BROKEN LINES TO FIND AMERICA'S SOUL

For every mile of highway rolling through this big old pasture we call America, there's a book celebrating the romance of the open road. Like a roadside hamburger, most of these books hold no surprises: understated photos, overwritten prose, a pickle on the side. Highway: America's Endless Dream (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, $29.

95), written by Bernd Polster and Phil Patton with photo selection by Jeff Brouws, does not drive into new territory. But its text is nicely dry, even witty and the authors have an eager enough eye that the reader won't mind taking one more cruise down the old blacktop. Like most road books, "Highway" is fascinated by both the mundane the vastness of the land bisected by American roads, the glow of neon motel signs and the unusual, from giant bowling pins to a prairie sandstorm. It also is fascinated by the passage of time, drawing many of its pictures from the black-and-white archives of the '30s, when highways had stoplights and ran into towns instead of past them. Visually, "Highways" has many of its best moments when it stops to look at people: the trucker, the waitress, the worker. But in a road book, stopping somehow feels like cheating, as if the author has pulled onto the shoulder and should be starting off again. No, Toto, this won't be the last road book.